Capitalism is possible with one single human beeing - the only thing that is needed is the willingness to save by using scarce time to create tools or intermediate goods.
Hi! Thanks for your response! It's food for thought. How would you distinguish your description of Capitalism from a minimalistic description of Communism? Or from a lonely hermetic lifestyle? I guess I was implicitly including "trade" as part of the description, but maybe that's incorrect?
Perhaps plain scarcity is not enough? I can imagine that if something is uniformly scarce, e.g.: pink-and-blue single-seater flying saucers are all uniformly unavailable, obviously they can't be traded. Nor would that fact encourage the trade of any other items.
Maybe scarcity also has to be relative?
E.g.: everyone might stockpile food for the winter, but because winter occurs at different times of the year and with different types of food becoming scarce depending on where you live, this might make it easier and more convenient to trade instead of just stockpiling?
I think you need to be at least two in the world for communism - one to abuse the other...
Anyway - capitalism can start with only one, voluntary trade with two or more.
Scarcity is always present.
So freedom from violence - private property - voluntary exhange. Some or all will save, which then will be capital. The capital is the basis for increasing productivity.